Beloved family-run retailer abruptly closes after 52 years on the high street
A BELOVED family-run retailer has abruptly closed after 52 years on the high street.
All Types Electrical in Rotherham shut for good after over five decades of trade on Christmas Eve.
The store, which sells electrical goods, was opened in 1972 by founder Maureen Stroughair and later taken over by her four children following her death.
Maureen’s daughter, Susan O’Brien, told the BBC that “changing shopping habits” forced the family to stop trading.
She added: “Since Covid, it’s got a lot worse.
“We can’t compete with some of the big shops but luckily we have had loyal customers that have come in.
“But it just gets harder and harder.”
Locals have also shared their devastation following the shop’s closure.
One wrote: “Very sad news, this little shop had everything and the price was always right. Will miss this shop and the friendliness of all the staff.”
While another said they were “gutted”.
It comes as a number of other independent retailers have also buckled under rising costs and slow sales.
For example, boutique pre-loved clothing store, The Closet at Harker, will close at the end of the year.
The Carlisle boutique has struggled despite its attempt to fill in a gap in the market, selling a unique blend of preloved, new, and “nearly new” high-brand ladies’ clothing.
Owners Debbie Armstrong and Kath Paterson confirmed the closure in a heartfelt statement on social media.
The post read: “We have made the tough decision to close our lovely little shop.
“We have given it a go for five months, which may not seem long, but when we’re not making enough money to pay rent, never mind pay ourselves some money.”
Elsewhere, Baytree Interiors , which sells gifts, home interiors and furniture will close its doors in February.
The retailer operates seven stores across the north of England.
And it’s not just local retailers feeling the pressure.
Card Zone will close its Scunthorpe site in April and another store in Stroud, Gloucestershire next month.
Just this month, bosses at a number of prominent retailers have revealed plans to cut stores from their estates.
Garden centre giant Dobbies closed 12 of its stores before Christmas to help shore up extra costs following a restrictive plan.
Meanwhile, Homebase has confirmed that six of its sites will close before the end of the year.
These include sites in Sutton Coldfield, Bromsgrove, Cromer, Fareham, Newark and Rugby.
Three more Homebase sites in Derry, Inverurie, and Omagh are also set to close in the coming months, along with a branch in Glenrothes near Fife.
The garden and homeware retailer crashed into administration last month, but around 70 stores were rescued by CDS Superstores, the owner of The Range and Wilko.
At the time it entered administration, Homebase operated 141 stores.
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.